


The screaming, heaving Fuckery of the World

by callmejillian



Category: Shadowhunters (TV), The Mortal Instruments Series - Cassandra Clare, The Shadowhunter Chronicles - Cassandra Clare
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Depression, Eating Disorders, M/M, Self-Harm
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-08-15
Updated: 2019-08-16
Packaged: 2020-09-01 12:10:08
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,772
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20257885
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/callmejillian/pseuds/callmejillian
Summary: Sometimes, life is just not what you were expecting it to be when you were a little kid playing in the park outside of the house.Sometimes was all the time for Alec.°°°TW: selfharm, depression, eating disorderPlease don't read if you can't handle those!





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> In this story Alec, Izzy and Jace are Shadowhunters living in New York. Clary and Jace have met and are in a relationship, but Clary is not a Shadowhunter. Basically the whole war never happened and Magnus have never met. Or not yet?

Sometimes, life's just not what you're expecting it to be; when you're a little kid playing in the park.

His life was okay, mostly, until Jace strode into it. Alec had always been the first choice, the first child. He had been their pride. Together with Isabelle, they had made the perfect team.   
Then all of a sudden this other kid had showed up and he was so much better than Alec. He was a better fighter, he had better control over his feelings, he was good looking, he actually had some kind of style even though they were young, and all in all he was just perfect.   
Don’t get it wrong, Alec didn’t disagree. Jace was better than he was.   
Then his mother started telling him that if he didn’t work harder he would never achieve anything. He would never be as good as Jace.  
Finally, they started introducing Jace before Alec. 

"_Oh, that’s our son Jace. I’m sure you’ve heard of him. He killed his first demon when he was only thirteen. He’s such a good fighter. He is the best young Shadowhunter I have ever seen. He is going to achieve great things. Oh, and that is Alec.”_

That was when it started. The late night training sessions, the restrictions and in the end the self harm, that had been Alec’s life for the better part of the last eight years.

The knive slid over his hip bone. It hurt but it was exactly what Alec was looking for. He needed it. They had just come home from a particular hard mission and nothing had gone as planned and Jace had "saved" the day. 

The cuts got deeper and deeper. They always got. The first one had always been the hardest. Yeah, he wanted to cut. He needed to do it, but it was still hard. The first one. He still felt strange doing it, but it was necessary. Cutting was the only escape that he had ever found. For a short moment in time everything seemed forgotten. Only the burning pain was there. Only the blood running out of the wound.   
And he still felt good about cutting after he had done it because it gave him control and when he needed to feel it again he could just check out the cuts and he could see with his own eyes that there was at least one thing that he was capable of archieving.

He let the knife slide over an old wound. That was another one of the feelings he really enjoyed. Opening old wounds. They hurt more than the new ones that he cut and it was also a bit harder to cut them open because the scar tissue was stronger than his normal skin.

A knock on the door pulled him out of his bubble.   
Shit.   
That was the first that he thought, but then he realized that the door was locked as he always did it. He just couldn’t risk anything and that way there was no way that they would enter without his permission.

“Yeah?” Alec asked while putting the knife under his pillow and pulling up his trousers. That was one of the reasons he cut the area around his hip. You could just pull your pants on and the fabric's thic enough not to show any blood. And even if some gets through, your shirt is often over it or you could just say that it was from the last mission. He hadn’t needed to use this excuse yet, but he knew that nobody would ask twice about it. Alec didn’t buy clothes often and so almost all of his shirts and trousers had some stains on them, especially blood stains.

“Alec,” Izzy asked. “You wanna come out and eat with us? Jace is being annoying again and I think I can’t handle it without your support.” Lie. She very well could. She always did this. Lie so that he would feel needed. He loved her, but he knew what she was doing and it wasn’t the slightest bit helpful.

“Yeah sure,” he said hurrying to the door to unlock it. In front of him, Isabelle stood with a smile.  
“Wow, didn’t think you would join us,” she said.  
Alec just shrugged. He hadn’t thought it either, but he had been refusing to eat with them for the past few weeks nearly every meal so he really should try to let them see him eat. Not that they would ever dare to think that he didn’t eat properly, but just in case. You could never be careful enough.

They walked together to the kitchen. Silently. That was what he preffered. Why should you always talk? There was nothing he could tell them. They were there when he lived through anything interesting so why should he tell them about that? And well, there was simply nothing else to talk about. His life was pretty much the same each and every god damn day. 

When they entered the kitchen the chinese food was already on the table and Jace sat on the chair that he usually occupied. Alec let his body fall down on the chair next to him. Probably as graceful as a fucking elephant. That was another thing Jace was so much better at. He let everything seem easy and graceful. Well, Alec really wasn’t that way. Alec tripped over flat ground without any reason and he was really the opposite of Jace. He hated it.

“Alec, the spring rolls are for you,” Isabelle said, gesturing to the package that apparently was filled with spring rolls. Alec remembered immediately why he never ate with them. Spring rolls were like the worst thing to eat when ordering Chinese. They had so much carps and fat. Too much. Also, that meant 522 kcal per portion and how he knew Izzy and Jace they had definitely ordered more than one for him. Since they came from a mission and now they have to eat more than usually. Alec had always believed that that was only a loozy excuse to cheat on the diet that they had to follow.

“Thanks Izzy, they are my favorite,” Alec smiled. He lied. He never wanted to lie to his family, but there was no way he could say what went through his head without having them worry unnecessarily. He had the situation under control. He could always stop restricting and stop self harming and stop working out in the middle of the night, but he simply wanted to do it.

“Guys, you wanna know about my newest crush?” Isabelle asked without really asking. She was going to tell them anyway so that was that.

“I don’t think that we have a choice,” Jace laughed and leaned back on his chair.  
“Well you don’t, so I have met that guy. His name is Meliorn and…”  
“Meliorn in the faeri guard Meliorn,” Jace interrupted her his mouth stuffed with food. How could someone eat as much as he did and still look as gorgeous and handsome?  
“Yeah, he’s super hot and he can’t lie so talking to him is so easy.” Izzy had always had a thing for downworlders. It was probably just the thrill of doing something forbidden. It was her form of rebellion. 

“Guys, where is the water?” Alec asked, saying the first thing since he sat down at the table. He was too concerned to try to seem as if he was eating without really eating. That took more concentration then someone would think.  
“You’ve got to get something, I drank the last bit,” Jace said. Alec could have scremed of pure happiness. His plan had worked out exactly as he wanted it to. Now he could leave for about ten minutes because he had to walk all the way to the cellar to get new water bottles. That way he could get rid of some spring rolls that he had slipped into his hoodie pocket and also spend time away from them so that it seemed natural that he needed longer to finish. And he could also drink while eating which would seem natural but led to him eating less than they thought he had eaten.

When he came back with new water they both were caught up in their phones and had nearly finished eating. Perfect.

Alec sat down again and pretended to be eating again. It took some training and concentration to really look like eating something without really doing it, but he had gotten a lot better over the years. 

After a few minutes of awkward silence Izzy’s phone rang. A huge grin widened her face. “Guys, excuse me, but that’s him.” And she left the kitchen. Jace didn’t even acknowledge her leaving. He just kept grinning in his phone and doing whatever the hell he was doing. Why had I even left my room? For this?

Another few minutes later Jace cleared his throat. “Alec, do you mind if I leave you? Clary wanted to call me and yeah. I’m sure you understand.”

“Sure, no problem.”

So Jace left as well and Alec was there with too many spring rolls for anyone to eat. Alone like always. They had their new favorite people. People they preffered over Alec. They invited him sometimes, but not because they enjoyed his presence, but because they felt obligated to do so. Like today. They had asked him because they hadn’t talked outside of missions in weeks and now they had left as soon as they had come up with an excuse.

Feeling numb Alec stood up and threw away the rest of the spring rolls. Why did he even make an effort for them not to notice when they didn’t care about him at all?


	2. Chapter 2

Back in his room he let his heavy body fall down on his bed. His gaze wandered over his walls. He had lived here as long as he could remember, but it still seemed as if nobody was actually living here. The walls were blank, no pictures or books that he had really enjoyed. In some of his drawers were some books, but most of the books that he had read he had gotten from the library. That was something else that he felt guilty about: Reading for pleassure. He had read a lot of books when he was younger and his parents didn’t seem very keen that he did it, but they didn’t show it. At least not to him. But when Jace came around they didn’t try to hide their feelings towards his reading habits anymore. 

“Hey Alec, look, Jace is reading a book about demons. You know, how to recognize them. A bit out of class reading material. Don’t you want to put your book down and read something similar?”

No, Alec didn’t want to. He had been reading a Magic Tree House book. These had been his favourites at the time, but he still put down the book and took the book his mother gave him. It was a huge book about Higher Demons and there was no fun in reading it. But Alec read it. He read it as fast as he could so that he could continue the book he actually liked. When he finished the giant book he was so proud that he told his parents immediately. That had been a mistake, since they just gave him a new book even bigger and less interesting than the one before.

That’s how the cicle began. He hadn’t read a single Magic Tree House book ever again. 

When he started leaving the Institute on his own without any company his way led him more and more to the public library. It was a huge building filled with amazing books that just waited for somebody to pick them up.

He was about fifteen then and the first times he came, he just entered it and didn’t pick up any book. There was just no time for him to do it. When his depression got worse over the months before his sixteenth birthday and he just didn’t fall asleep anymore, he took his first book home. It was one that he had been interested in since the first time he came. 

“The perks of being a Wallflower” was just the perfect book. Even though he didn’t want to admit it to himself at the time, he identified not only with the main character, but also with Patrick and even more so with the guy Patrick dated. He was closeted, pretending to be something he was not and when his father found out about his secret he just hit the fuck out of him.

That was what Alec had always imagined would happen when he would tell anyone about having been interested in a guy before. 

The book really helped him. Not to get out of his depression, but to make it more bearable. It was preferable to read and dive into another world than to lay awake in bed trying to fall asleep and having to listen to these horrible thoughts that he had. 

“The perks of being a Wallflower” was one of the books that he had kept. He knew that it was bad just to take books from the library and Alec still felt horrible about it, but he had connected with the book so much that he just needec to own it and there was no way in hell that he would ask his parents to give him money to buy books.

Over the last few years some books had found their way into the drawer of Alec’s nightstand.   
Perfectly hidden under a few old shirts that he hadn’t worn in what seemed like eternity.

Now was the time to open the drawer and take out one of his favourite books. He had known which book he would take out before he actually made the decision to read something.

“Call me by your name” was one of his most loved books. Yeah, it was sad and most people would guess that if you’re depressed you don’t want to read about sad books, but honestly, that’s exactly what Alec always tended to in particular bad phases. Not only because he was in the mood, but also because it was much easier to dwell on someone else’s sadness than your own.

After the sun had fully sunk and Alec had been reading for some time he put down the book. It was time for his training session. Especially because he had eaten as much as he did earlier there was no way in hell that he would skip it. 

He applied a silence room on himself and walked over to his dresser. From there, Alec took a hoodie and black sweatpants to change into. When he opened his trousers the blood from the wounds stuck to the fabric. It hurt a bit, but that was what he needed right now. Feeling the pain and knowing that he had control over it. He had given himself the wounds and he didn’t plan on healing them with a rune. They were to soothing and relaxing. 

After he had changed he opened the window and simply jumped out of it. It was only the second floor so he didn’t even try to do it a different way. So, nobody would see him running around the Institute in the middle of the night and also going for a run was much more fun in Central Park than on the treadmill. 

He started running. Faster than he normally would, but today was a particular bad day so why should he try to go slow? Alec just needed a way to get rid of his feelings. Right now, he just wanted to feel exhaustion and pain of working out. That were more prominent feelings than sadness. At least, for some time.

Alec had been running for quite some time when a man walked into his way- The shadowhunter tried to just run a bit to the side, but the mad did the same. There was no way in hell that he could see Alec. He was glamoured and no mundane could see you when you were glamoured. Still, he stopped about two meters away from the man and just eyes him suspicously.

“What does a shadowhunter do late at night in Central Park all on his own?” the man grinned and now Alec saw it. His eyes… he was a warlock.

“I’m just going for a run.” Alec shrugged. What did he want from him?

“I take it asking you for a drink won’t be such a good idea then?” The warlock stepped closer now and smiled at the man standing in front of him. The man was about the same height as Alec, but his skin was darker and he wore pretty amazing clothes. Nothing that Alec would ever wear, but nonetheless pretty attractive. 

The shadowhunter cleared his throat. What should he say? The man clearly was a warlock and there was no way in hell that he could ever really end up with him because his parents would decapitate him with their own bare hands. Also, didn’t everybody leave him in the end? Even if it worked out for some time, it wouldn’t last. A few happy months and then being sadder than ever? Was it worth it?

“I don’t know,” Alec simply said.

The warlock laughed. “What? You don’t know whether you want to go out with me? That is really not a helpful answer.” Alec shrugged with his shoulders again. What should he do? Did he want to? Kinda. Was he going to say yes? Probably not.

“Well,” the warlock said. “How about I give you my phone number and you decide whether you want to give me a call or not?” That was actually a good idea. That way he could think about whether he would take the risk or not. 

“Yeah,” Alec nodded and gave the warlock his phone, who within seconds saved his phone number and gave the phone back.

“Then, I hope you give me a call. Have fun on your run.” The warlock smiled, but Alec didn’t really say anything. He just started running again leaving the man behind. 

Back at the Institute he climbed up the wall to his room and fell right into bed. That was the level of exhaustion that he always tried to archieve. Not even having the energy to change into his pyjamas and just falling asleep.

The next morning Alec got woken up by his sister. She stood next to his bed and her gaze was judging him for something.

“What are you doing here?” He asked and yawned hiding his mouth behind his hand. The was his parents had always taught him to.

“You are late for training,” Izzy just said dryly. “That’s the fourth time in two weeks.” Shit. Of course he hadn’t woken up to his alarm. When he was as exhausted as he had been yesterday, he always overslept. He hadn’t found a solution for this problem yet, but he was working on it.

“Sorry, I’ll change and then I’ll be there in two minutes,” Alec yawned again, this time it came too fast for him to raise his hand.

Izzy didn’t even say anything, she just left.

Another yawn came over him and a gaze to his clock told him that he didn’t even get four full hours of sleep. He heaved his body off the bed and somehow got to his dresser without loosing his balance. The run yesterday evening had made his muscles sore and the lack of food was definitely not helpful. Yeah, he had read some books about girls that were struggling with eating disorders and all of them were not aware of having one, but Alec had never felt that way. He knew what he was doing and he also knew that it would probably have some bad effects on his body. He wasn’t stupid, but there wasn’t any other way either. Eating made him feel horrible. Not eating gave him the same sense of control that cutting gave him. So, of course he would choose the ladder. Everybody would.

When Alec arrived at the training centre of the Institute three pairs of eyes laid on him. Izzy’s, Jace’s and his mother’s. 

Shit. He closed his eyes before walking the last steps towards them. He had forgotten that Maryse would check on their development today.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t hear my alarm,” Alec said, his head held high even though he really didn’t feel any self confidence. As soon as his mother was present he held his body differently. More like a soldier and less like someone that was tired all the time. Well, he did that as soon as anybody was present, but especially when it was his own mother.

Maryse looked at him with anger in her eyes. “You can’t be late for training. Why can’t you be more like your siblings? Like Isabelle and Jace?” That hit right into his heart. 

“Honestly, Alec. You are the oldest. You are suppossed to be the leader, but instead you are so weak. You can’t disobey straight orders. If you do that in battle, imagine what will happen. I want you to work on that. For the next month you are not allowed to go to any mission with the others.” His mother voice was stern and sincere. There was no way he could ever change her opinion.

Alec just nodded as an answer and stayed strong. He couldn’t show anymore weakness. Not towards the others. He just needed to accept the fact that he would see even less of the others over the next month. That was the thing he was most horrified of. Yeah, they had their daily training session, but it was only about an hour long and outside of that he only had contact to anyone at missions.

It was stupid that he even needed to see the other two that regularly especially when they didn’t care about him or needed him, but he just couldn’t change it. Alec needed them because if he was honest with himself, there was nobody else that he had. They both had other people, but there was no one else for Alec.

He had never had any friends outside of Jace and Isabelle. He hadn’t even had people he knew. People he saw sometimes. No, there was no one else and eventhough he hated the fact that he was dependent on the two others, he couldn’t change it.


End file.
